Sunday, July 1, 2012

My Nervous Breakdown

Welcome to my nervous breakdown.
I don't know when it started. I don't know when it ended.
IF it has ended.

I know very little.

It's time to do things different.

A week ago, I called the VA Crisis Line, in crisis, and spoke with Sara. Actually, it was a private chat room and I was chatting with SarahD1. She was caring. She was understanding. I liked her. She was words being typed somewhere in the world caring about me and only me at that moment.

I needed that.

I was referred to therapy. I didn't want to kill myself. In fact, I have an overwhelming fear of dying and I felt as though I was. Sometimes, like yesterday, I still feel like I am.

What happened yesterday? To most people, it would be nothing. To me, it was like the world ended.

I see this guy. He's one of the nice ones, I think, but I SO don't know for sure. I want to believe he's a nice guy and not an asshole, but the examples I've had over the years have been less than stellar.

I haven't seen him in over a week and the last time, well, he was breaking up with me. It spun my world. I called the hotline. He left me because I hurt him, I hurt myself, and he was right. But I didn't want to hurt him and I didn't want to do that to anyone ever again. I didn't want to feel the pain I was feeling in my heart, body and soul anymore. Some people get here and decide to make the pain go away the easy way. Some reach out for help. I reached out.

I went to my VA Hospital and got myself checked into mental health. I looked my counselor in the face and asked for help. We are working on that.

All I had to do this weekend was make it to Monday. An easy assignment. I have a list of things I can do before I do the things that hurt. I like to exercise and that is #1 on the list. My list consists of things I can do instead, both indoors and out, and becomes more and more difficult as it becomes longer. The last thing on my list is "Learn to juggle."

I didn't try juggling last night, but I came close. I need to add more to that list.

I have a food allergy. Lots of people do. No big deal. I have to be careful about ingredients in restaurants and the food I bring home and I carry a rescue pen. I get to JAB it into my leg should I have a reaction and that alone keeps me reading labels. But not everyone around me remembers MY allergy and my guy seems to have forgotten. He ate the food I'm allergic to yesterday. I wasn't with him so there was no fear of me reacting, but we had a date for today.

So, what's the big deal? A woman here in my not-so-small, not-so-big city a few years back DIED after kissing her own husband hello after a hard day at work. In an effort to save money, he packed his own lunch, a peanut butter sandwich, washed down with a soda. He came home, she kissed him hello, and two hours later she was dead. Her own husband had killed her. Innocently, it turns out.

They didn't know.

They didn't know that the allergen in peanuts was secreted into his saliva (and semen, blood, maybe sweat) and they innocently kissed hello after work, getting ready for their evening together, ready for work the next day, making vacation plans, caring for the kids. Then it all ended.

No one can really say how long the allergen stays in the body or how long it is live. I was told 24 hours, but to be safe, I stay away for 36. I've had a reaction 3 times before and each time the the time of consumption to reaction has shortened and the symptoms worsened. My throat swells and hurts, my face and hands swell. I can't breathe. It is frightening, to say the least. I fear death but I fear death by suffocation the most.

He wanted to see me today. I wanted to see him. My fear of dying overwhelms me. To see him, I would have to not touch him, him not touch me. I would jump to the sky if he so much as touched my hand. I had to make the hard decision to cancel our date, meaning it could be another week or more, before I could see him again. I am crushed.

It would be as though I was in jail, talking through glass, unable to touch, unable to comfort each other and say we'll get through this. I cannot balance my fear of dying with my need to touch. I am not that strong. Standing in front of him, I would justify it and touch anyway.

That falls into the category of things that put me in danger for my own emotional gratification. The very behavior that got me to the hotline in the first place. I had to make the right choice. I don't feel good about i,t but it is the right thing. I still want the pain to go away.